


heavy on your shoulders

by brynnmclean (ilfirin_estel)



Series: cast some light 'verse [6]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Awkward Conversations, Cassian Andor: Cunnilingus Addict, Communication, Discussing Sexual History, Established Relationship, F/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Relationship Discussions, There Are No Straights in Space, bisexual!Cassian, sub!Cassian
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-09
Updated: 2018-04-14
Packaged: 2019-01-15 09:49:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12318576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilfirin_estel/pseuds/brynnmclean
Summary: "I’d like to try.  With you.  If you want.”Or, the one where Jyn and Cassian talk some things out.  They're trying.





	1. “Are you going to fuck me?” - Jyn

**Author's Note:**

> This fic will feature Jyn and Cassian having Relationship Discussions that don't fit into the other fics in the 'verse. These chapters will be posted as I write them, rather than in chronological order.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Please note this first conversation contains discussions of past insensitive sexual partners and Jyn having poor experiences with PIV sex.** If you have tag suggestions, please let me know.
> 
> This conversation is set between [waiting to step forward](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10441419) and [I wanna hurry home to you](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10888026), but is strongly tied to [cast some light & you'll be all right](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9856910).

Jyn asks. 

She comes back one evening sweaty and sore from a training session, her recruits in high spirits who all jostled each other on their way out the door, gossiping about drinks and relationships—and, admittedly, the latter has been on her mind often lately because things still feel new and fragile between her and Cassian. So she comes back to their quarters and finds him sitting cross-legged on their floor, a datapad in hand and sheets of flimsi spread out in a circle all around. And she looks down at him and the question flies out of her mouth before she can catch it and stuff it back behind her teeth: “Are you going to fuck me?”

Her voice comes out too harsh, crackling in the air—and as soon as she says it, her chest tightens, her lungs shrunk by half. She scrubs a hand over her face and wishes the floor would drop out beneath her and toss her into space. Cassian looks up from his paperwork and she, belatedly, hits the controls to shut their door.

“I don’t understand what you mean,” he says after a small eternity, face creased into a subtle frown. He looks away from her—a relief, a reprieve—and he carefully gathers up his documents into a pile and sets the datapad on top, before rising to his feet and putting it all onto their little desk.

Fuck. _Fuck._ Jyn side steps away from the door and puts her back against the wall, sliding down to the floor with the excuse of unlacing and tugging off her shoes. “I,” she starts but has to swallow around something hard and hurting in her throat. “That wasn’t. How I wanted to ask that.”

The creak of the bedsprings as Cassian sits down on the edge of their bed reaches her at a distance. She tosses her shoes over to where his boots are neatly lined up by their tiny dresser, knocking one over. Still, she doesn’t move away from the wall, though she’s freezing, a horrible combination of dismay coursing through her veins and sweat cooling on her skin.

“I don’t know what you’re trying to ask,” Cassian admits, hesitation wavering in the words. 

Jyn can’t look at him, just folds her knees up to her chest and bends her head a bit, fingers trembling in spite of herself as she pulls the pins from her hair. The silence that settles over them is unbearable, and it’s all Jyn’s fault. She forces herself to break it even if what she says comes out terrible and stilted. Fucking ridiculous. “One of the new recruits, she’s sweet on an engineer. And her friends were teasing her today about when she’d ride his dick.” Something like a laugh squeezes out of her lungs, a strangled exhale. She can’t even come at it head on.

Out of the corner of her eye, Jyn sees Cassian rest his hands over his knees. “Oh,” is all he says, neutral, and that—

“Do you want that?” Jyn asks, jaw clenched. Every word falls too hard, stones thrown. She sounds pissed even to her own ears, but she isn’t, she’s just—“Are you going to put your dick in me?”

“Not if it upsets you,” Cassian says, no longer blank, his voice strange now, full of alarm and a muted sort of urgency that cuts right through to the heart of her. “Jyn, I don’t want to do anything you don’t want.”

“Shit,” Jyn breathes, and folds her hands around the hairpins, trying to stamp down on the shiver running through her whole body. “Fuck. I’m sorry. I—sorry, Cassian, you didn’t say anything—but I told you, I _told_ you—”

Cassian gets off the bed and joins her on the floor, but doesn’t touch her except for nudging his socked foot against her toes. “Jyn. It’s okay.”

That’s all he says, waiting for her. She closes her eyes and fights back tears, feeling so Force-damned stupid.

Cassian isn’t like the other people she fucked. She knows that. And yet.

“It hurt,” she manages to tell him when she finds her voice again. “The few times. Not many, not—forced, but it was never good. I told you. I took too long, there wasn’t time, I wasn’t relaxed. I stopped letting them touch me. It was never any good.”

Cassian’s hand curves over her foot, warm. Here. Jyn drops the pins on the floor and reaches out, fumbling as she tries to hold his hand.

“If you don’t want to have sex that way then we won’t.” Cassian says, like it’s simple, like he isn’t disappointed in the slightest. Jyn dares to look at him and he must see something in her face because the look in his eyes softens. He touches her knee with his free hand, so gentle that she has to catch her breath. “It’s fine, Jyn. Really. If it’s something you want to work up to, we can do that, but I’m not…” His gaze flickers away, a flush creeping up his neck. She can see a mark she left on his throat peeking out from the edge of his collar. “I’m not biding my time or playing an angle. And I meant it when I told you I want to make you feel good. I don’t have a lot of experience with…” He hesitates then, glancing back at her, searching. “... relationships. But I’d like to try. With you. If you want.”

“I do,” Jyn says, swiping at her burning eyes. “I _do._ ” Her heart pounds against her ribs so hard she feels bruised inside, close to breaking. “I’m not good at this, though.”

Cassian huffs a laugh, rueful. “Me neither.”

A part of Jyn wants to run. Wants to scrape herself up off the floor and slip away from Cassian’s reach like a coward, fleeing from everything he offers. He’d let her go, she knows, let her push right past him and out the door, and he wouldn’t judge her. Even if she didn’t come back.

But the scared, scarred place in her that screams that she should run from him now—it’s an old wound. An echo from her old life. She doesn’t want to go back to that.

She unfolds her legs, uncurls herself out of the protective ball she’s made of her body. Cassian shifts to the side to give her room, but she doesn’t let him pull his hand out of her grasp, holding on tight.

Silence falls again, but the tension in Jyn’s muscles slowly loosens. Cassian waits for her.

“I thought,” she says when her heart rate has calmed. “I thought you might have _expectations._ ”

Cassian rubs his thumb over her knuckles, picking up her scattered hair pins and making a pile by her thigh. “No expectations. Just desires.”

“And if it’s something I can’t give?”

“Then tell me.” Cassian abandons the pins to brush a strand of hair from her face. His mouth quirks into a small smile. “Tell me no. Tell me to stop. I’ll listen and I promise I’ll do the same.” The smile brightens in his eyes. “Trust goes both ways, doesn’t it?”

That startles a laugh out of Jyn, but it’s warm and feels good. Clear of doubts. “Yes, it does.”

Cassian bites his bottom lip, and suddenly all Jyn wants is to tip forward and kiss that grin fighting to flash across his face. But he ducks his head and speaks before she can give into the impulse. “Do you like what we’ve being doing? With, ah, hands and mouths?”

“Yes,” she says, and half because she wants him to know, half because she has a feeling it might make him blush all the way to the tips of his ears, she adds: “And I like the face you make when you come.”

He exhales in a rush and then looks at her levelly, though it pleases her to note he has to swallow hard before he speaks. “I like the sound you make when I go down on you.”

She doesn’t know what to call the noise that escapes her, some cross between a squeak and a sigh. It runs off with everything else she wanted to tell him. _Later,_ she thinks, tugging her hand from his only so she can fist the front of his shirt and pull him in, trying to show him her relief. “Kiss me,” she mutters against his mouth, clumsy but eager. It wins her a laugh. “ _Cassian._ ” 

“I want _you,_ ” he tells her, soft and sure against her lips before she takes him down flat to the floor.


	2. “Is there something you want me to do to you first?” - Jyn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Endless gratitude to my beta [eisoj5](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eisoj5/pseuds/Eisoj5) for helping me knock this one out! 
> 
> Hi, welcome back to the 'verse after a six month hiatus! Timeline-wise, I'd set this one slightly before [dying to be taken apart](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12179187). Here we are getting into some of Cassian's headspace and history!

It takes Jyn a while to notice. Partly because a sliver of time devoted to sex can be a rare thing to come by—and then also because Cassian’s laser sharp focus on Jyn’s pleasure coming (literally) first is… different. Surprising. Overwhelming.

But she catches on.

“What do you want?” she asks him one evening, crowding him up against the wall of their quarters, one hand cupping the back of his neck and the other sneaking beneath his shirt to rest over his heart. She’d left a mark there before his last mission and she has plans to renew it. A vow he can see on his skin.

But for now, she tilts her face up to meet the press of his mouth, grinning as he hums with pleasure into the kiss. She’s missed that sound, missed having her hands on him, missed him. He came home in the early hours of the morning, but between jetlag and the mission debrief and seeing the rest of their crew and her having a training rotation—this is the first time they’ve had a moment alone for this.

Maybe it’s not the best time to have the conversation, but Jyn starts it then and there. She leans back, a breathless laugh escaping her as he keeps trying to kiss her. “What do you want, Cassian?”

“You,” he says, lips against her forehead, her temple, her cheek, her chin. His hands rest at her hips, holding her close, but not pulling her in. She knows she’s free to twist away at any time. But she wants the opposite, so she slides in closer to slot her thigh between his and feel him twitch, his cock half-hard already and his pulse skipping beneath her palm.

The soft sound he makes and the way he murmurs her name are so sweet. Jyn gives him her mouth and tastes his smile, the burning hunger in him. And her answering desire surges in her blood.

“Tell me, Cassian, tell me what you want right now.”

His hands travel up and down her back, restless strokes mixed with careful tugging at her shirt while he slumps down the wall to skim his mouth against her neck. He’d left his own mark there at her throat, a promise she carried while he was away. She shivers even though it’s warm here in their quarters, a flame steadily growing between them. They’re both wearing too many clothes. 

“You know what I want,” Cassian breathes, his tongue leaving a line of heat down to her collarbone.

If their positions were reversed and he had her up against the wall, he’d already be on his knees before her. His clever hands would be at the fastenings of her pants, his face upturned to search for her permission. 

Just the image in her mind sends a bolt of desire through her, temptation so strong she’s dizzy. Cassian catches her, his arms around her and palms splaying against her spine. Jyn can’t help but roll her hips against him, her thighs clenching around his leg—he gasps and goes very still instead of rutting up against her, and that’s—he does that, he waits for her, he _gives_ so easy, and the familiarity of that drags her back up to the surface of the want in her core. 

“Later,” she says as much to herself as to him. She rocks on her heels and then steps away, grasping for breathing room. “Is there something you want me to do to you first?”

Everything suddenly halts, the ensuing silence so surprising that ice straightens Jyn’s spine. Cassian blinks at her, his hands falling to his sides, his brow furrowing. His clothes are rumpled, his hair mussed where she’d run her fingers through it. But it’s his eyes that catch her attention, a strange uncertainty flashing like sparks from a misaligned blaster.

Cassian’s throat bobs when he swallows, and his voice comes out slowly, “Something I want you to do to me?”

Jyn has the terrible urge to laugh, but successfully chokes it down. “Is it a difficult question?” she asks, though, before she can stop herself. Cassian’s expression shutters, and regret floods all through her before it forms a tight ball in her stomach, a stone sinking to the depths. 

She’d tripped over a wire she didn’t know was there, set off some alarm in him, but she curls her hands into fists and squares her feet. She can’t back down now, not when this might be important. He’s important. She can fix whatever this is.

Cassian’s face is the blank mask he defaults to when he attempts to avoid attention. But the tightness at the corners of his eyes and the nervous tick he has of wetting his bottom lip betray him. He shakes his head, but the gesture doesn’t feel directed at her. His gaze has gone distant, fixed on a point over her shoulder. “Do you not want me to touch you?”

Jyn’s hands itch, that stone in her gut heavier now, anxiety roiling. She can’t think of what she said wrong, but it must have been something. She’ll probably fuck it up worse in a minute. Still, there’s no way out but through. She’s not going to run. “I just asked you if you want something from me first. Is that a problem?”

Cassian shakes his head again, this time a clear negative, but his voice is still stilted, uncertain. “No. That’s not a problem.”

“What is the problem then?” Jyn looks him over quickly, taking in his visible tension—shit, she’s still boxing him in, he’s trapped between her body and the wall. She needs to back off _now_.

Cassian’s gaze sharpens on her again as she tries to take another step away from him, giving him more space. He makes the tiniest sound of protest, catching her wrist for half a second before he drops that hold as if burned. She grabs his hand before he retreats further—she knows what this gesture means, at least. _I’m not running away from you,_ she wants to tell him, but the words get trapped under her tongue.

“You surprised me,” Cassian says, low and apologetic. He clears his throat. “The question. Surprised me.”

Jyn’s jaw unlocks; she hadn’t realized she’d been clenching it. “Do you… want to talk about it?” Damn it, she isn’t _good_ at this, but it’s important.

A rueful smile flickers across Cassian’s face. “If you don’t mind me continuing to struggle for the right words.”

Jyn actually does laugh then, a sharp exhale of startled relief. “They don’t have to be the right words just so long as I learn which ones I said wrong.”

Cassian huffs, muttering a nearly inaudible curse and swiping his free hand over his eyes. “You didn’t say anything wrong, Jyn.”

Okay. Okay, she can’t have whatever this conversation is turning out to be here with Cassian still slumped against the wall, rubbing his forehead as if he can scrub away whatever hurts in his brain.

“Come to bed,” she suggests, not letting go of his hand as she carefully leads him away. “Come on.”

They shed their weapons and holsters and boots, their bed creaking beneath Jyn’s weight as she sits down on it first. She very deliberately doesn’t watch Cassian as he busies himself with putting everything in its proper place, letting him take all the time he needs to feel comfortable. There’s a tiny part of her that whispers that he might slip out the door and leave her here with all her silent questions, but the more rational part of her brain knows he won’t. 

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees him line his boots up neatly by the door and place his blaster on their little desk. Her sliver of doubt vanishes as he sheds his shirt and strips down to his underwear. No, he won’t leave. She’s the only one he lets see him even this bare, without a weapon strapped to him and his scars on display.

He comes back to her and carefully maneuvers himself to his side of the bed, sitting down cross-legged, back against the wall again. His hands flex in his lap like he doesn’t know what to do with them, so Jyn climbs over to sit next to him and take his hand in hers. She folds her legs over his bent knee and presses her shoulder against his, relieved when he entwines their fingers together, and the tight lines of him soften a fraction.

Jyn waits for Cassian to say something until the silence becomes too heavy, her chest aching. Is he waiting for her to start? Is he still trying to find the right words for what he wants to say? Her lungs are burning; she exhales slowly, and then cautiously pushes forward. 

“I wasn’t rejecting you earlier. I’ve just noticed that you don’t ask me for things very often. Or—no, you ask to put your mouth or your hands on me, but you don’t ask me to touch you.” Now, she echoes what he asked her before because she needs it to be clear: “Do you not want me to touch you?”

Cassian makes a small distressed sound in the back of his throat and turns to press his nose against the side of her head. “No. No, that’s not it at all. I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking about it that way.”

Jyn wants to look at him, but pins her gaze to their clasped hands instead. “You mean you didn’t notice you’ve only been asking for things to do to me?”

Cassian snorts, his breath ruffling her hair. “No. I don’t see it that way. I haven’t been keeping a record of the amount of times I’ve made you come versus how many times I have.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Jyn shoots back, and as the words crack in the air, a stillness comes over Cassian that would be a startled jump in anyone else. “I meant,” Jyn amends somewhat hastily, “I want to understand what you need from me.”

 _I’m trying,_ she thinks, but the words won’t come. Cassian pushes up off the wall and shifts around to face her fully. She adjusts to him, letting him tangle their legs together, finding a comfortable way to fit their jagged edges in with their carefully cultivated sense of safety.

“I think,” Cassian starts slowly, ducking his head, each word methodical, “I might view sex differently. I like focusing on you. I get a lot out of giving to you.” 

“I noticed,” Jyn says, reaching up to card a hand through his hair, smiling as he leans into her touch. He’s joked about her having lothcat-like tendencies, but he’s not much different sometimes. “I like focusing on you, too. Ever since we started—” Jyn pauses, biting her lip. She still doesn’t know how to say it exactly, but she shakes her head and barrels onward. “You told me you want to make me feel good. I want that, too. But you always focus on me first now. Is there a reason for that?”

Cassian glances up from beneath his eyelashes, something flashing across his face too fast for Jyn to identify. “You trusted me with some of your history and I haven’t done the same. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that.”

Jyn traces the shell of his ear, feeling heat rising as he fights back a blush. “It’s fine, Cassian. Tell me now, if you want.” 

A smile appears on Cassian’s face, but it’s brittle, self-deprecating. “I haven’t been with many people. There were a few who considered me a challenge—cold-blooded Andor. One of them, one of the first… I think he wanted to get under my skin more than anything else. He acted like he’d won something by making me come. I didn’t like how I felt, after. Hearing him laugh about the sounds I made.” Jyn bares her teeth in a snarl, but Cassian shakes his head, shakes the memory away. “But it wasn’t always like that. There were other people, other times where it felt… better, _cleaner_ to throw myself into the task of making someone else feel good. Those times, my own pleasure seemed unimportant.”

Jyn wants to travel back in time and punch the man Cassian mentioned square in the face, but in the here and now, she also wants to ask what Cassian means by _cleaner_. First things first, though: “It’s not unimportant. Not to me.”

Cassian’s smile strengthens, turning genuine. She nearly leans in to kiss that curve of his mouth, the crinkles at the corners of his eyes, but snatches the desire back and tucks it away. _Not yet_. 

“I know, Jyn,” Cassian says, so much warmth and affection in the words that she can’t believe anyone ever thought him cold. “I know. But my first thought isn’t about my own gratification. My first thought is you. And it—” His gaze flicks down, away. “It’s been that way from that start, even when I didn’t touch you.”

Jyn cups his cheek, but doesn’t push him to look at her. “You thought of my gratification first?” She doesn’t know how she feels about that, about that idea and—about the start. How she’d slammed him up against cargo containers and jerked him off while he’d gasped and moaned against her mouth. He’d been thinking about her pleasure then instead of taking his own?

“You had me,” Cassian says, his voice very quiet. “You had me then. You have me now. That’s important. What was difficult before was I didn’t understand why you’d step away from me.”

A chill runs through her when it occurs to her—“You didn’t think I was like that asshole, did you, laughing and acting like I’d won something off you?”

Cassian jerks back, head snapping up, eyes gone wide with his own dismay. “No, Jyn.” He reaches for her, unhesitating, his hands grasping her shoulder, her knee, the touch as grounding as the vehemence in his voice. “Not at all. I just wanted to know how to please you.”

Jyn studies his expression not for the truth in it—the light in his eyes is clear as starlines in hyperspace—but for any sense of recognition about how she mirrors him. “Cassian, that goes both ways.”

Cassian’s brow creases with a frown. She doesn’t let him turn away now, doesn’t let _herself_ run or shrink back from vulnerability, even though her heart starts to hammer in her chest as he takes her words in.

He deserves to know that she wants to please him, too.

“You’re allowed to want things from me for yourself,” she adds, watching a flush spread up his neck and bloom along his cheekbones. But there’s a smile curving the corners of his mouth, a brightness shining through his reserve. She tips forward to brush her lips against his. It’s one of the softest kisses she’s ever given him, near chaste, but it feels right. He slides the hand he had resting on her knee down to cup her hip. “Ask me for things,” she murmurs when she pulls back for air. “Tell me what you want for you, too.”

Cassian dips his hand beneath her shirt and traces along her ribcage. His fingertips are cool along her skin, but heat pools in her core. She reaches down and presses his palm flat against her side, stopping him from drawing more distracting patterns.

“Can’t I give to you first?” she asks, trying for teasing now, pitching her voice low and relishing how he closes his eyes and shivers. “Ask me for something.”

Cassian exhales a laugh that catches in his throat. “Can you…” he begins, then goes quiet, jaw working as he gathers words together. “Can you stay close? I want you to push me down onto the bed and kiss me.”

She wants him to ask for more, for her hands, her mouth—but it’s a start. She untangles herself from him and then plants her hand on his chest and bears down on him. He goes down easy, sinking back into their mattress and waiting, still and pliant, as she swings her leg over his torso and hovers over him.

“You have me,” he whispers as she leans down and gives him the kiss he asked for, a tender meeting. He groans when she nips at his bottom lip and flicks her tongue against his; his arms wrap around her and tug her closer until she presses more of her weight on him. When she nuzzles against his jaw, enjoying the scrape of his beard against her mouth, he tells her, soft but clear: “I want you to hold me. And I want you to take me apart.”

She presses a smile into his throat. “Tell me more. Tell me how.”


End file.
